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Google backed L5/WorldVu gets satellite internet spectrum

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  • Google backed L5/WorldVu gets satellite internet spectrum

    360 internet satellites in polar orbits connecting the world. They now have their spectrum from the ITU.

    This was tried in the 90s by Teledesic but launch costs were too high, but now with SpaceX, Orbital and the others it may well work.

    http://www.spacenews.com/article/sat...-for-satellite

    Google-backed Global Broadband Venture Secures Spectrum for Satellite Network

    PARIS — A company based in Britain’s tax-friendly Channel Islands and backed by Google and the founder of satellite broadband trunking provider O3b Networks has secured radio spectrum rights to build a low-orbit satellite constellation to provide global broadband to individual consumers, industry officials said.

    The company, which uses the name L5 in its regulatory filings and is registered in St. Helier, Jersey, under the name WorldVu Satellites Ltd., has picked up Ku-band spectrum initially planned for use by a now-defunct company called SkyBridge to launch a constellation of 360 small satellites for a global Internet service.

    The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Geneva-based United Nations affiliate that regulates satellite orbital slots and wireless broadcast spectrum, shows L5 filings as promising to start service in late 2019.

    The satellites, tentatively designed to operate in circular orbits of 800 and 950 kilometers inclined 88.2 degrees relative to the equator, have been given regulatory deadlines of between late 2019 and mid-2020 to enter service, according to ITU records.

    WorldVu appears to be a Google response to the same question being asked by all the big global Internet service providers, search engines and social networks: How do you reach hundreds of millions of potential users residing in places without broadband access?

    Facebook has purchased Titan Aerospace, a designer of high-altitude unmanned vehicles to remain stationed over a given area to provide broadband access from what are sometimes called “atmospheric satellites.” With WorldVu, Google appears to be focusing on the conventional exoatmospheric version.

    The ITU’s Master International Frequency Register is routinely peppered with filings — satellite networks in ITU parlance — that clog the system, hoard spectrum rights and ultimately never are built.

    In the case of L5/WorldVu, there is reason to suspect this is not just another paper satellite.

    For starters, WorldVu is located in the same small town where Greg Wyler registered and founded O3b Networks, which also started with modest support from Google and is now building a business of providing high-speed fixed and mobile Internet links to customers located between 40 degrees north and 40 degrees south of the equator. O3b’s mission, as the company likes to point out, is to connect the “other 3 billion people” around the globe “who have been denied broadband access for reasons of geography, political instability and economics.”
    >
    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

  • #2
    That's awesome. Now dig some fiber to my house, Google.
    “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
    –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

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